Athlete: Reynor
Sport: e-games, StarCraft II
Client: Red Bull
Location: Milan, Italy
Born in Poggibonsi (Siena) on 1 July 2002, Riccardo discovered StarCraft II in December 2010, at just 8 and a half years old. He starts playing with his father (Massimo) for pure fun, but after about 3 years he is noticed by some foreign teams for his talent and is acquired by the Swiss team of mYinsanity.
He takes part in some tournaments, but being still very young (about 12 years old) he cannot take part in the official circuit.
Back in Italy at just 14 years old, he gets an incredible Top 8 at the Dreamhack in Valencia: it is the first anomaly created in a circuit forbidden to minors under 16, because Riccardo wins the prize, but his points are removed and, for a change to the regulation, for two years can no longer take part.
From 2018, however, at the age of 16, he can finally return to the official circuit and only in that year Reynor wins many online tournaments: he gets a nice 5th place both at the WESG in China and at the WCS in Valencia, as well as reaching a step from conquering the WCS in Montreal, losing the final dive against the star of the moment, Serral.
Although he does not enter the Blizzcon Global Finals for a very short time, he still has the great honor of being called up by the Blizzard parent company to be part of the video celebrating the 20 years of the game.
The worthy conclusion of a year to be framed comes in December, when he joins the French team Gamers Origin and becomes an official Red Bull athlete.
To date, Riccardo “Reynor” Romiti fully represents the future of Italian export in the world, as demonstrated also by the victories at WCS Winter and WCS Summer in 2019, at Dreamhack Masters Summer 2020, and in September 2020 also at Dreamhack Masters Fall, first in the European circuit and then in the world final.
Since Reynor is a very young athlete and in the middle of growth age, every year I meet him I notice radical changes.
It is precisely for this reason that even his sponsors need to periodically renew the repertoire of his images that they have available.
In this shooting, in a slot of a couple of hours, the goal was to obtain new portraits of Riccardo and some more lifestyle shots.
Since a few days before I had a similar shooting with another gamer (you can find the shooting here), I repeat some light set up that I had already used.
Having a very limited time to take all the shots that were needed, I opted for very simple shots on a technical level.
The first shots were taken on a black backdrop with only two back lights with red and blue jellies to re-propose that somewhat mysterious mood with the face in shadow but still recognizable.
Later I added a third front light point and removed the colored jellies from the two back lights for a bit more “standard” half-length portraits. Furthermore, to have more contextualized shots, I introduced some representative elements of the gaming world: the seat and the headset.
Finally, using a dark corridor, I took some more lifestyle portraits.
As I said at the beginning, they are all very simple shots, most have a single light point, but overall I am satisfied with the quality of the light I managed to obtain.
Still just at the very start of her career, Magda is already seen as a pillar of Poland’s national team and is fully embracing her role. She says: “I like feeling the weight of responsibility. I like it when a lot depends on me. The more, the better I play.” With that excellent attitude, it seems inevitable that she’ll achieve great things both with her club and country.
Also in this case priority was given to the creation of a presentation video of the new athlete and consequently the time for pictures was very little. To get ready for the shooting and be as fast as possible on location, I conceived and drew all the shots I wanted to take, studying all the light schemes.
